A High Court ruling by two British judges regarding the torture of a Guantánamo detainee has unleashed a major political crisis.

The judges have stated that they have been pressured by the United States into concealing evidence that should be made available in any country governed by the rule of law. This took the form of threats to withdraw security cooperation, instigated under the Bush administration and continued under Barak Obama's presidency.

Binyam Mohamed, 30, is currently in Guantánamo Bay but is reportedly being prepared for a return to the UK. He states that he was tortured by US agents in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan between 2002 and 2004, and that Britain's security agencies were complicit.

David Miliband told Parliament he would not press the US for details of the case

Evidence that a British resident was tortured before being flown to Guantanamo Bay may yet see the light of day after senior judges hearing the case were told yesterday they had been misled by the Government.

The Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, argued on Wednesday that national security could be compromised if secret CIA documents detailing the interrogation of Binyam Mohamed were placed in the public domain. His comments came after the High Court refused to order the disclosure of a CIA dossier referring to the treatment of Mr Mohamed, 31, who was arrested as a terrorism suspect. It said that to do so would put the British public at risk because America had threatened to withdraw co-operation in terror cases.

"There was no such thing as Palestinians ... They did not exist." - Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (The Sunday Times, 15 June 1969)
Gaza is abuzz with activity.

Humanitarian groups and relief agencies are trying to squeeze through Israeli and Egyptian bottlenecks to deliver their much-needed supplies; fighter jets bomb tunnels and kill ‘militants’ as Ehud Olmert maintains he is abiding by the ceasefire; international human rights lawyers are busy recording eyewitness testimony and gathering evidence for future war crimes tribunals; Palestinian civilians are returning to their destroyed homes to sift through the rubble and mourn their dead; and intense negotiations underway in Cairo hope to broker an extended truce between Israel and Hamas.

But even if all of Gaza’s outstanding issues were miraculously resolved to Tel Aviv’s satisfaction, Israel will still find pretext to continue agitating against Hamas and the people of Gaza.

It is relatively easy for many casual observers of Middle East events to be deceived by balanced and ostensibly objective reporting. Simplistic divisions and false dichotomies are often presented. Moderates are juxtaposed against extremists and their identities vary according to current hegemonic agendas. Alternatively, competing narratives are asserted, both of which are assumed to have equal degrees of validity. The aim, of course, is to shape worldviews. Instead of informing readers about asymmetric claims, the reports frequently hide the ugly truth by presenting competing arguments as equivalent.

The assault on Gaza exposed not only Israel's callous disregard for international law but the gutlessness of the American press. There were no major newspapers, television networks or radio stations that challenged Israel's fabricated version of events that led to the Gaza attack or the daily lies Israel used to justify the unjustifiable. Nearly all reporters were, as during the buildup to the Iraq war, pliant stenographers and echo chambers. If we as journalists have a product to sell, it is credibility. Take that credibility away and we become little more than propagandists and advertisers. By refusing to expose lies we destroy, in the end, ourselves.

All governments lie in wartime. Israel is no exception. Israel waged an effective war of black propaganda. It lied craftily with its glib, well-rehearsed government spokespeople, its ban on all foreign press in Gaza and its confiscation of cell phones and cameras from its own soldiers lest the reality of the attack inadvertently seep out. It was the Arabic network al-Jazeera , along with a handful of local reporters in Gaza, which upheld the honor of our trade, that of giving a voice to those who without our presence would have no voice, that of countering the amplified lies of the powerful with the faint cries and pain of the oppressed. But these examples of journalistic integrity were too few and barely heard by us.

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